Subject
Mourning and John Webster in Pale Fire
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Date
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Pursuing the idea of "mourning":
The poem Pale Fire deals with "infinite foretime and/infinite aftertime" (Canto 1,lines 122 and 123). It starts a few days before John Shade s 61st BIRTHDAY. It ends abruptly seventeen days later with his DEATH, on July 21.
(July 21... was it Ada s birthday?)
There is a writer ( detective stories and Sci-Fi), Lady P.D.James, who recurrently mentions verses that deal with infinite fore/aftertime or beginings & ends.
Besides "A Certain Justice" her two other novels that mention these lines are: "A taste of death" and "An unsuitable job for a woman".
In the latter she added a quotation about cradles and death by Joseph Hall (1574-1656): "Death borders upon our birth, and our cradle stands in the grave."
P.D.James has twice attributed these lines about beginings&ends to Shakespeare, but I could not locate them there. I found them in J. Webster s ( 1580) "The White Devil" (She may know they are John Webster s, though, since in her novel "A Certain Justice" events take place at Middle-Temple, where Webster might have studied law).
"I do not look
Who went before, nor who shall follow me;
No, at myself I will begin and end . . ." (Flamineo)
Interestingly enough, this same John Webster is mentioned twice in "Pale Fire" - through T.S.Eliot, whose presence is significant in John Shade s poem .
B.Boyd linked Webster via T.S.Eliot, but he didn t mention the lines where there is a triple allusion mixing Eliot, Webster and Goethe. Although the question: "What is that noise? The wind under the door" is connected by Kinbote to Goethe s Erlkönig, a similar verse appears also not only in Eliot himself - but it subsequently indicates Webster s.
(Cf. Eliot s note on line 74 when invites us to compare "Oh keep the Dog far hence, that s friend to men" to the dirge son by Cornelia in "The White Devil", act 5 scene 4 - where we also find the line "No, at myself I will begin and end "... )
Following Webster s lead I came to a certain puzzle which I formulated as: "who was murdered and whose body was not recovered for a proper burial?" in Pale Fire?
I thought it might be interesting to mention this theme here because I m not competent enough to pursue it further and I have no direct access to J. Webster s works. Perhaps someone at the List might be interested to pursue these references.
Jansy
Search the archive: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/archive/nabokv-l.html
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
The poem Pale Fire deals with "infinite foretime and/infinite aftertime" (Canto 1,lines 122 and 123). It starts a few days before John Shade s 61st BIRTHDAY. It ends abruptly seventeen days later with his DEATH, on July 21.
(July 21... was it Ada s birthday?)
There is a writer ( detective stories and Sci-Fi), Lady P.D.James, who recurrently mentions verses that deal with infinite fore/aftertime or beginings & ends.
Besides "A Certain Justice" her two other novels that mention these lines are: "A taste of death" and "An unsuitable job for a woman".
In the latter she added a quotation about cradles and death by Joseph Hall (1574-1656): "Death borders upon our birth, and our cradle stands in the grave."
P.D.James has twice attributed these lines about beginings&ends to Shakespeare, but I could not locate them there. I found them in J. Webster s ( 1580) "The White Devil" (She may know they are John Webster s, though, since in her novel "A Certain Justice" events take place at Middle-Temple, where Webster might have studied law).
"I do not look
Who went before, nor who shall follow me;
No, at myself I will begin and end . . ." (Flamineo)
Interestingly enough, this same John Webster is mentioned twice in "Pale Fire" - through T.S.Eliot, whose presence is significant in John Shade s poem .
B.Boyd linked Webster via T.S.Eliot, but he didn t mention the lines where there is a triple allusion mixing Eliot, Webster and Goethe. Although the question: "What is that noise? The wind under the door" is connected by Kinbote to Goethe s Erlkönig, a similar verse appears also not only in Eliot himself - but it subsequently indicates Webster s.
(Cf. Eliot s note on line 74 when invites us to compare "Oh keep the Dog far hence, that s friend to men" to the dirge son by Cornelia in "The White Devil", act 5 scene 4 - where we also find the line "No, at myself I will begin and end "... )
Following Webster s lead I came to a certain puzzle which I formulated as: "who was murdered and whose body was not recovered for a proper burial?" in Pale Fire?
I thought it might be interesting to mention this theme here because I m not competent enough to pursue it further and I have no direct access to J. Webster s works. Perhaps someone at the List might be interested to pursue these references.
Jansy
Search the archive: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/archive/nabokv-l.html
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu